Mary Relloto

Bella familia. Mamma mia.

Bill Whitaker

Mary Relloto grew up in Ohio, longing for a large family, only to find out that she had one a la familia in Italy. It was years before she could ask her birth mother the most painful question of all. Why was she given away?

Mary Relloto

The church convinced her that it was the best thing for her. And so instead of helping her, it was better for them to make money. So am I angry at the church? Hell, yeah.

John Wertheim

Enter some countries, you arrive in style. Here, you arrive in what's basically a backyard swing hoisted by a crank 60ft above the North Sea. And if you're wondering about the safety regulations, yeah, us too. Then again, when you are a sovereign nation, you by definition set your own rules. That's a hell of a way to

Anderson Cooper

get into a country.

Michael Bates

The only way to travel.

John Wertheim

Welcome to Sealand, a monarchy that declared its independence in 1967. Just wait till you hear this story.

Christopher Nolan

I feel a real responsibility to try and get as much on screen for the audience as possible.

Anderson Cooper

Action.

Scott Pelley

Christopher Nolan is one of the great directors of our time. Oppenheimer, Dunkirk, Interstellar, and next, the Odyssey.

Matt Damon

I mean, it was the hardest movie I've ever done by far. I mean, not even close.

Leslie Stahl

I'm Leslie Stahl.

Bill Whitaker

I'm Bill Whitaker.

John Wertheim

I'm John Wertheim.

Anderson Cooper

I'm Anderson Cooper.

Scott Pelley

I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes.

Bill Whitaker

During the 1950s, the Catholic Church in Belgium separated thousands of newborns from their unwed mothers and put them up for adoption, often without the mother's consent. The women were shamed into surrendering their babies by their families and a powerful church. In 2024, Pope Francis apologized for those forced adoptions. But Belgians weren't the only victims. From 1950 to 1970, the Vatican sent 3,500 Italian children to America on something called an orphan visa. The trouble was, most were not orphans. Like their Belgian counterparts, they, too, were the children of unwed mothers. Many mothers later went searching for their children, only to discover they had been sent across an ocean. As we first reported in 2024, thousands of American adoptees are still struggling to piece together their lost lives. It was a day he'll never forget. American adoptee John Campotelli was 28 years old when he was reunited with his Italian birth mother. He'd been searching for her for more than a decade. A mother he'd been told had abandoned him.

John Campotelli

My mom said, you know, 28 years have gone by. I've never been able to bake a cake for you for Your birthday. She says, I don't care what month it is. I'm gonna bake you a cake. We need to celebrate because our prodigal son has finally come home.

Bill Whitaker

John Campotelli was born piero Davi in 1963 in Italy. His mother, Francesca, was unmarried and forced by her family to give him up. He was sent to a Catholic run institution for the children of unwed mothers. Shunned and disgraced. For Francesca handed her baby to the nuns immediately. Her name was stripped from the birth records. With the stroke of a pen, Piero Davi became an orphan. Campotelli showed us the Church documents that changed his life.

John Campotelli

It says here they have been since birth and their whereabouts are unknown. They knew damn well where my mom was. I mean, she showed her documents when she handed me over. So this is an outright lie.

Bill Whitaker

A lie John Campotelli has spent his life unraveling. As soon as he was declared an orphan, he was eligible for adoption and a US Visa. He says his mother told him she had no idea. She had every intention of coming back for him.

John Campotelli

She said, I never signed a paper anywhere saying that I was willing to give you up.

Bill Whitaker

She thought placing you in the institution was temporary.

John Campotelli

She thought that it would be her right to be able to get me back someday once she got her life together.

Bill Whitaker

She never signed you away?

John Campotelli

No. She said, I placed you because I couldn't keep you at that point in time because of the family situation. But I never consented to the adoption or to the fact that you would leave Italy and you'd be far from me for the rest of my life.

Bill Whitaker

Piero Davi was one of thousands of children born out of wedlock that the Vatican repackaged as orphans. The Church arranged the visas, helped by a 1950 US law that broadened the definition of orphan to include a child with one parent, but one who couldn't provide care. With that leeway, the orphan program boomed. For Piero's mother and thousands like her, it was devastating to learn the child she'd entrusted to the Church had disappeared. It seems that many of these mothers had no idea that their children were being sent to the United States. Could they do anything about it?

Leslie Stahl

No, absolutely not. You can't send a baby to the United States and then tell the adoptive parents that the birth mother wants the child.

Bill Whitaker

Author Maria Lorino uncovered the Vatican's orphan program in her book the Price of Children. She pieced the story together from hundreds of documents in the Church's own archives in New York. Lorino told us the Program hinged on a consent form the mothers were supposed to sign, severing all rights to the child. But Loreno told us doctors or lawyers sometimes signed the consent without telling the mother. Others were deliberately misled.

Leslie Stahl

There were women who were trapped into this situation and tremendous pressure to relinquish their children. There were women who were tricked who signed forms they didn't understand. And in the worst cases, there were women who were told their child had died.

Bill Whitaker

Told their child had died?

Michael Bates

Yes.

Bill Whitaker

What do you make of that?

Leslie Stahl

Yeah, it's so horrible. The thinking I've been told was that it was an easier psychological closure to tell a birth mother that her child had died than to let her know that her child had been given up for adoption.

Bill Whitaker

So representatives of the church were telling these mothers that their children had died when in fact they had not and they had been sent to the United States.

Leslie Stahl

Yes.

Bill Whitaker

Loreno told us many more women were told they could get their children back. She found letters from distraught mothers pleading for their return. Now, these are letters that were found in the archives.

Leslie Stahl

That's correct. This is a letter to Reverend Landy. Monsignor Landy, I beg that my children be repatriated. If I cannot again see my children, I will shorten my life. I find myself deceived, and I do not even know how.

Bill Whitaker

Monsignor Landy was Andrew Landy, an American priest living in Rome who ran the orphan program. Landy's boss had the ear of the Pope. In 1951, Pope Pius XII personally saw the first children off. Thousands more would follow. How could they be defined as orphans? I know if they still have a mother or in many cases, a father still alive.

Leslie Stahl

Yes. And to talk to the adopted children today, they get very angry to say, I'm not an orphan. You know, I spent years searching for my parents. But it was a linguistic construction.

Bill Whitaker

The church charged $475 per child, about $4,500 today. But Lorino told us the demand from eager American Catholics grew so fast that Monsignor Landy sent local priests to scour the countryside for more children.

Leslie Stahl

The correspondence shows that they traveled throughout Italy looking for cases for children to send.

Bill Whitaker

Literally looking for. Yes, there is a babies born out of wedlock.

Leslie Stahl

Yes.

Bill Whitaker

It actually turned into a machine.

Leslie Stahl

Yes.

Bill Whitaker

Looking for babies to send to the United States.

Leslie Stahl

Right.

Bill Whitaker

John Campotelli told us he had a loving family in New York, but when he found out he was adopted, he says he became obsessed with finding his birth mother. There were few clues. Even his surname, Davi, was a dead End Invented by the state to cut all ties. Finally, he persuaded an Italian newspaper to publish his story. And then a breakthrough. Someone knew his mother. In 1991, he spoke to her for the first time.

John Campotelli

Are you Piero? Well, no, I'm John. Oh, no, I'm really Piero. Okay. I'm your son.

Bill Whitaker

So you were nervous?

John Campotelli

I was really nervous because it's something that I always wanted to do. But when the moment comes, you're, like,

Bill Whitaker

kind of tongue tied.

John Campotelli

Yeah, yeah, I was tongue tied. I finally get to talk to the person that actually gave birth to me, that held me, that had breastfed me for two or three days in the hospital. So I know that she loved me.

Bill Whitaker

What was her voice like to you?

John Campotelli

It brought me to tears, I must admit. And we said we were never going to let go of each other from then on.

Bill Whitaker

Two months later, he was on a flight to Italy.

John Campotelli

We had exchanged photographs, but I said I didn't need a photograph because I saw that lady there in front of me, and I said, that's my mom. She looks identical to me. And after 28 years, I could say that I just ran over to her and I embraced her and I said, mom, finally. And I kissed her. I said, mom, no one had to tell me who you were. I knew who you were. I just had to look at you.

Bill Whitaker

Campotelli moved to Italy and learned Italian to speak to his birth family. But he told us that didn't undo the suffering that the church had caused.

John Campotelli

I felt that my whole life was based on a lie. They told her that they would take care of me, and that was a lie. They got rid of me. They didn't take care of me. They cut all relationship that I could possibly have with my birth family, and they shipped me overseas. I became a package for them.

Bill Whitaker

To this day, the church insists the orphan program was the only chance for a new life for these children. Lorino told us Monsignor Landy, who ran the program, died in 1999 without ever expressing any regrets.

Leslie Stahl

I think that he believed in the merit of the program, that they were bringing children to good Catholic homes and that these children would be raised well in the United States.

Bill Whitaker

How does that explanation sit with you now?

Leslie Stahl

Terribly. I mean, because this is how women were treated. And this is why I think of them as disposable women.

Bill Whitaker

Disposable?

Leslie Stahl

Yeah. It's a terrible thing to give up your child. But nobody was thinking about these women then.

Mary Relloto

Bella familia. Mamma mia.

Bill Whitaker

American adoptee Mary Relloto travels often to Italy to see her birth family. She told us she had a happy life growing up in Ohio. But she says she longed for a large family only to find out she had one. It was 1992, when she first met Ana Maria, her birth mother.

Mary Relloto

The only thing I could do was stare and look at every inch of her for at least an hour.

Bill Whitaker

And you're dumbfounded.

Mary Relloto

Not only does she look like me, but she acts like me, I act like her. We're the same weight. It's almost like this is my twin, but older. I know exactly what I'm going to look like when I get older. So now I pay attention to my health.

Bill Whitaker

Mother and daughter say they're still learning about each other. Rolotto told us it was years before she could ask the most painful question of all. Why was she given away?

Mary Relloto

I just needed to know her story, her truth. Because no mother gives up their child so willingly, without grief.

Bill Whitaker

Do you now understand why she gave you up?

Mary Relloto

Because she didn't have a piece of bread, she said to give us poverty. She didn't have clothes for us. She was in a desperate situation, you know? So instead of the church helping her maintain a house and feed her children, instead they took her children.

Bill Whitaker

Ana Maria is now 83.

Leslie Stahl

Montebello.

Bill Whitaker

She agreed to speak with us if we withheld her last name. Even decades later, the stigma of having children out of wedlock remains. She told us about her other child, Christian, who was sent to a church run institution when she became ill. But when she went to pick him up, she says the nuns told her he had died. I went into depression. Anna Maria told us. I searched for him everywhere. How did he die? Where was he buried? Nobody could tell me. Did you believe that your son was dead? Something inside me didn't feel right, but I could do nothing about it.

Anderson Cooper

Ciao, Christian.

Bill Whitaker

But Christian had not died. He told us he learned the truth about his mother at age 40. Ana Maria says the church had put him up for adoption without telling her. It was a swindle. She told us they stole a child that they wanted. So what was it like for you when you found that Christian was in fact, alive? I have no words, she told us. There were lots of tears and hugs. The Vatican's orphan program ended in 1970, but the fallout continues, rippling across generations. Mary Rolato told us she never should have been sent to America.

Mary Relloto

I think the church convinced her that it was the best thing for her. And so instead of helping her, it was better for them to make money selling babies. That's all I can think of. So am I angry at the church? Hell yeah, I am. I would have a different life, too. And while it might have been difficult, I still would have survived it without this kind of grief that I have inside of me now. Hey, it's Jen Hatmaker. Here's what I've learned in midlife. Joy isn't the reward you earn after all the work is done. Joy is the work. That's what this new series on for the Love is all about. The sacred yes. It's choosing delight, rest and pleasure on purpose. Because saying yes to yourself, that's the thing that finally lets you fill your table with everybody else. Come find your sacred yes with me. Follow and listen to for the Love wherever you get your podcasts.

Anderson Cooper

Okay.

John Wertheim

Name that country. It's planted opposite Europe, sitting proudly on the other side of the North Sea. It's a monarchy that features its own currency, postage stamps, constitution, national anthem, love of tea, and a pair of handsome princes born two years apart. We speak of Sealand, a crumb of real estate off the English coast that declared its independence in 1967. Sealand has a full time population of 1. It has a landmass the size of roughly 2 tennis courts. Its leading export might be the national mythology, a history of piracy, coups, counter coups, rogues and offshore Internet schemes. It may make tiny Liechtenstein look like China by comparison, but as we found out in 2023, by rights, Sealand is a sovereign nation. Join us as we compile some notes from a truly small island.

Michael Bates

We can see Sealand over there, by the way. Now, you see that?

Anderson Cooper

Oh, there she is.

Michael Bates

Yeah, yeah. On a starboard bow.

John Wertheim

Behold the world's smallest state. It's a micronation in the extreme. A principality which sits or stands only seven miles off the coast of England. Its self described reigning monarch is this guy, Prince Michael Bates.

Anderson Cooper

Here we are.

Michael Bates

Yeah.

John Wertheim

A platform and a couple of concrete husks and. Yeah, this is a state.

Michael Bates

Yep.

John Wertheim

Enter some countries, you arrive in style. Here, you arrive in what's basically a backyard swing hoisted by a crank 60ft above the North Sea. And if you're wondering about the safety regulations. Yeah, us too. Then again, when you are a sovereign nation, you by definition set your own rules. That's a hell of a way to

Anderson Cooper

get into a country.

Michael Bates

The only way to travel.

John Wertheim

On the plus side, there's no long line at the arrivals hall. I'm following you to passport control. Mike Barrington fills various roles and positions on Sealand. Right now, it's Immigration and Customs. He also Happens to be the only permanent resident.

Anderson Cooper

There you are, sir.

John Wertheim

So now I'm official.

Anderson Cooper

You are welcome to Sealand.

John Wertheim

It wasn't always named to and it was never intended to be a country. Originally called His Majesty's Rough's Tower, it was a hastily constructed nautical fort, one of several the British set up in the North Sea during World War II. Equipped with anti aircraft artillery, these forts were designed to prevent German bombing raids on London. During the war More than 100 wars Royal Marines were crammed into these towers for months on end. Descending the seven story towers, it feels and smells like a cross between a treehouse and a diesel soaked submarine. First up, the first class bedroom suite. It's a nice one.

Michael Bates

Yeah, Nice tv.

John Wertheim

Our claustrophobic tour continued downward. Now we're underwater at this point, so we've still got a couple floors to go.

Michael Bates

You hear ships going past, you hear the propellers going around.

Scott Pelley

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

John Wertheim

Like many countries, there's a national cathedral,

Michael Bates

freedom of worship and Sealand. I think there's even the Quran here

John Wertheim

somewhere on the bottom floor.

Michael Bates

The jail, two days in the brig, bread and water.

John Wertheim

I have to look at the Sealand constitution and see what.

Anderson Cooper

My rights are very limited at the moment.

John Wertheim

If you're wondering by now how this concrete island constitutes a country, stick with us here.

Christopher Nolan

This is radio Caroline on 199.

John Wertheim

Back in the 1960s, these same waters played host to the burgeoning unlicensed commercial radio business that operated on ships and old forts, what the British government called pirate radio. It was the time of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks. But the stodgy BBC, which had a monopoly on broadcasting in Britain, gave the rock bands just an hour of airtime a week. The younger set in Britain, millions of them tuned their radio knobs to the pirate stations. In 1965, Prince Michael's father, Roy Bates, an enterprising swashbuckling World War II veteran, commandeered a fort where another pirate station operated. It was the Wild west on the North Sea.

Anderson Cooper

The DJs may not be highly experienced, but they certainly pull their weight.

John Wertheim

Bates set up Britain's first 24 hour outfit. He called it Radio Essex.

Anderson Cooper

You're in tune with Radio Essex, broadcasting on 222 meters. We're doing a job that's needed. The public want us to do the job, so do businesses. And I think while this demand is here, we'll remain in business.

John Wertheim

But not for long. The British government enacted a new rendering all pirate radio stations illegal. Bates was forced to shut down. But true to his nature, he was something other than scared off.

Michael Bates

He just would not back down.

John Wertheim

Form of surrender. If he had said, you know what?

Michael Bates

I'm out, he wouldn't know that word. Surrender. I mean, no.

John Wertheim

Far from surrendering, Bates seized another Fort Roughs Tower, which was outside UK territorial waters. Instead of restarting Radio Essex, he did something bolder still. On September 2, 1967, he declared it an independent state, Sealand, and declared himself its prince. It was his wife Joan's birthday, and

Michael Bates

it was, of course, a hugely romantic gesture to make my mother a princess.

John Wertheim

In addition to taking you out to dinner, I'm gonna make you a princess.

Michael Bates

He didn't take her out to dinner, but he just made her a prince.

John Wertheim

Prince Roy and Princess Joan, along with their two children, Michael and Penny, set up home on Sealand. The sheer novelty of their lifestyle was a constant source of amusement on the mainland. This newsreel is from 1969.

Anderson Cooper

The start of another day, even for the new royals, is no different than for millions of others. The request for a common cuppa. Mrs. Bates, how is it possible to keep looking glamorous in conditions like these?

Leslie Stahl

It's no more difficult than anywhere else in the world. We're quite comfortable here. We have all the things I want. Look. Makeups, brushes and things.

John Wertheim

At age 16, Penny was less convinced.

Leslie Stahl

It was freezing cold and it had no electricity. To flush the toilet, you'd have to chuck a bucket over the side, drop it down about 80ft, pull it up and flush the toilet.

John Wertheim

That was your toilet?

Mary Relloto

Yes.

John Wertheim

The Bates family had big ambitions to turn Sealand into a. A tax haven, a luxury island and casino. And they went all in on the trappings of statehood. Fashioning a flag, stamps, currency, an anthem, even a national motto. Imare libertas from the sea. Freedom. As teens, Michael and Penny would spend months on Sealand, holding down the fort as it were, firing off warning shots and tossing Molotov cocktails overboard to fend off periodic attempts of invasion from rivals and buccaneers.

Leslie Stahl

When the press eventually came out and took photographs, my father called me down and he said, now look. He said, how many times have I told you, you do not hold a gun like that.

John Wertheim

You weren't holding the gun the right way.

Leslie Stahl

And actually, if you look at the picture, the way I'm holding the guns is dreadful.

John Wertheim

Firmly settled on Sealand, the Bates remained a nuisance to the British government. So much so, as a warning to the family, a team of Royal Engineers blew up a similar North Sea fort at Sealand's National Archives, which doubles as Prince Michael's dining room table, we were shown declassified plans drawn up by the British Ministry of Defense to take Sealand by force.

Michael Bates

The following units are to be available to the execution of the operation. Royal Navy, two Wessex 5 helicopters, crafts from HM Naval Base Chatham, Portsmouth, Medway, and a clearance diving team. It's crazy, isn't it?

John Wertheim

But it wasn't just the British government that wanted to dislodge the family. In August 1978, a band of rogue German and Dutch lawyers and diamonds merchants launched a coup d' etat with designs of founding their own offshore casino. They arrived by helicopter with a film crew in tow, taking Prince Michael by surprise and then roughing him up.

Michael Bates

They tied my elbows together, my knees together, my feet together, my hands down to my knees, and they picked me up. And one says the other in German, let's chuck this bastard over the side. He's too much trouble.

John Wertheim

You're a full on political prisoner right now.

Michael Bates

Yeah.

John Wertheim

Sealand had fallen. After three days, Michael was released. Did Michael and his father then return via helicopter, fully armed and flanked by a group of bruisers, to stage a successful counter coup? Yes. Yes, they did.

Michael Bates

I jumped and landed crash in the middle of the Germans. The sawn off shotgun hit the deck.

Mary Relloto

Boom.

Michael Bates

And all the Germans went like that.

Anderson Cooper

Surrender. That's it.

John Wertheim

You've reclaimed your principality.

Mary Relloto

Yeah.

John Wertheim

Disarmed. The plotters were released, all except for one. His name was Putz. And he was made to clean the bathroom, make coffee, and imposed a fine for treason. $37,000. His imprisonment brought a German diplomat to Sealand. But if you have German emissaries coming here to try and negotiate the release of this prisoner, doesn't that imply that Sealand is a state that's having relations?

Michael Bates

Absolutely. It's de facto recognition, isn't it? It happened. Yeah.

John Wertheim

This diplomatic visit was critical for the Bates family. An international treaty signed in the 1930s established four requirements for statehood. One is recognition by another state. Sealand had already met the other tests. A government check, a defined territory check, and a permanent population check, thanks to Michael Barrington. So what's your position here?

Anderson Cooper

Well, I do most of the engineering work. Electrically and whatever. Apparently, I'm head of Homeland Security.

John Wertheim

What are you protecting this place from?

Christopher Nolan

The British government or anybody else that

Anderson Cooper

decides to take us over? We are a country, after all. A small nation.

John Wertheim

You're ready to use weapons if you have to?

Anderson Cooper

If need be, yes. No hesitation.

John Wertheim

But in recent years, to keep afloat, the Bates family has updated their pirate radio sensibilities for the Times. In the early 2000s, they partnered with fringe Internet entrepreneurs who invested millions with designs of turning Sealand into an offshore data haven. Prince Michael's son, Prince James, showed us the old server room.

Anderson Cooper

We used to run things like gambling sites, porn sites. We had a few dubious people asking us to do things that we didn't really agree with. There was an organ transplant company like Human Organs that wanted to host out here, which my father was against.

John Wertheim

Gambling and porn is okay, but we draw a line at harvesting human organs.

Anderson Cooper

Yes, exactly.

John Wertheim

That venture failed dismally. But today, James and his younger brother, Prince Liam, are still harnessing the power of the Internet. The Bates family won't disclose the size of the national debt or the yearly budget, but it is serviced through the online sale of noble titles. Become a lord or lady for $30. 600 bucks will make you a Sealand Duke or duchess. People are buying these titles. What is that all about?

Anderson Cooper

I think it means so many things to so many different people. Some people love the act of political defiance. Some people love the love story that ran through it with my grandma and grandpa. Some people love that, you know, David against Goliath.

John Wertheim

That national myth, the very idea of Sealand, has now far outgrown the country itself. As for the house of Bates, well, Roy and Joan have passed on, and the rest of the lineage lives in the small English resort town of Southend on Sea. Princes James and Liam run a business harvesting cockles. Princess Penny runs a Botox clinic nearby. And seven years ago, Prince Michael married and welcomed a new princess, Mei Xi, a former artillery major in China's People's Liberation Army. Six decades after founding their private little country, the royal family remains committed to the bit. Is this a golden age for Sealand?

Michael Bates

Hopefully.

John Wertheim

The British Navy rolled up tomorrow and said it's time to reclaim Sealand. How do you respond?

Michael Bates

Well, first of all, I'm sure they wouldn't. But if they did, I'd just get the best China out and make them a nice cup of tea.

John Wertheim

The royal family's latest gambit. An E citizenship program that's signed up thousands of people from 134 countries. Each pays 10 bucks a month to help keep Sealand standing.

Leslie Stahl

Getting to and staying on Sealand.

John Wertheim

I'd be lying if I said it

Leslie Stahl

was the most comfortable night's sleep@60minutesovertime.com.

Bill Whitaker

Evening. Buyer's remorse.

Anderson Cooper

Buy a new car.

Bill Whitaker

I'll be moving in.

Anderson Cooper

Let's get started.

Leslie Stahl

Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana.

Bill Whitaker

You what?

Leslie Stahl

Yeah. Great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no, no, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice.

Bill Whitaker

I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations.

John Wertheim

I mean it.

Leslie Stahl

Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana.

Anderson Cooper

Limitations and exclusions may apply.

John Wertheim

See our seven day return policy at Carvana.com.

Scott Pelley

Christopher Nolan is among the great Hollywood directors of his generation. His blockbusters have won eight Teen Academy Awards and hauled in more than $6 billion. Next Nolan will release this summer his adaptation of the nearly 3,000 year old story the Odyssey. We met the 55 year old British American in his office in LA where he wrote epics including Oppenheimer, Dunkirk, Inception, Interstellar and the Dark Knight. A Nolan movie is a spectacle, big and loud at the limits of what's possible. But a Nolan story is grace, imperfect people revealing what it is to be human. The Odyssey is Nolan's most ambitious yet. It had to be, he told us, because he imagines every film is the last he will ever make.

Christopher Nolan

I feel a real responsibility to try and get as much on screen for the audience as possible to give the audience the the fullest flavor, the fullest set of images and events that that we can give them for a given story.

Scott Pelley

What are you the essential elements of a Christopher Nolan film.

Christopher Nolan

I always try to have a point of view on the story that's from inside the film. So I'm not looking at the characters from 30,000ft. I'm trying to be in the race in the maze with them because I want to try and give the audience a sense of what a place would smell like, what it would feel like. But you're also trying to make the most involving, the most extreme version of a story possible.

Scott Pelley

Nolan's Odyssey is an extreme version of the Bronze Age war fought by the soldier king Odysseus with his Trojan horse, deception and 10 year struggle to return home. The Odyssey is Nolan's 13th film in 28 years and unlike many directors, he writes the screenplays.

Christopher Nolan

When I'm writing, I'm visualizing the film as an audience member, as somebody experiencing the story. Then when I direct the story, I'm trying to take the audience there. So in the case of the Odyssey, I'm trying to put the audience in, into that horse, Trying to put them on the deck of a ship.

Scott Pelley

You don't want the audience to watch the film, you want the audience to be in the film.

Christopher Nolan

Very much. Yeah. I have a feeling of having connected with these characters, having lived in the world with these characters.

Anderson Cooper

Action.

Scott Pelley

We're sitting next to your desk.

Christopher Nolan

Yep.

Scott Pelley

And I couldn't help but notice there's a book right next to me called how to make good Movies. So this is it? This is the secret?

Christopher Nolan

That's the secret, yeah. I tried to tidy up before you came and hide all my secrets, but

Scott Pelley

it looks like it was written in the 1950s. And there's a guy with a Super 8 camera very much about Super 8.

Christopher Nolan

Super 800 movies. And I'm actually old enough to have started on Super 8. My family had a Super 8 camera instead of a video camera.

Anderson Cooper

My earliest memories, literally, are of Chris making movies.

Scott Pelley

Nolan's younger brother Jonathan is a Hollywood director who told us that Chris was handed the family 8 millimeter camera to keep him busy.

Anderson Cooper

Our take on Star wars, of course. In the basement, blowing up some of my toys with firecrackers.

John Wertheim

Probably.

Anderson Cooper

Probably 8 or 9 years old at that point, I would have been 3 or 4.

Scott Pelley

What was it that fascinated him about the camera?

Anderson Cooper

I think he's just always been captivated by the idea that you could take this device and use it as a portal into another universe. It was like a door.

Scott Pelley

Another universe, but a door that at first, Chris Nolan had to batter through like the astronaut in Interstellar. As a young man. You graduated with a degree in literature. You applied to film school, and they turn you down.

Christopher Nolan

How do you know that?

Scott Pelley

Research. You know about research?

Christopher Nolan

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yes.

Scott Pelley

What did the film school tell you?

Christopher Nolan

Nothing. You just get a letter saying, no, thanks.

Anderson Cooper

I want to be a writer anyway.

Scott Pelley

Despite no thanks, he kept shooting films on weekends with friends. Then, in 1999, a turning point. He made Memento.

Matt Damon

I don't remember.

Scott Pelley

It's a complex mystery with an amnesiac environment investigator who remembers clues through tattoos. This was an early reveal of Nolan's trademark. An intricate plot of shifting timelines that challenges the audience to keep up. But movie executives feared it was confusing.

Anderson Cooper

Something doesn't feel right.

Scott Pelley

No one wanted to distribute Memento.

Christopher Nolan

Yeah, we don't have to say it quite like it's quite so sternly.

Scott Pelley

I mean, the story has a happy ending.

Christopher Nolan

The story does have a happy ending.

Anderson Cooper

And, no, it was.

Christopher Nolan

It was a lesson in humility. It was a lesson in patience, of independent filmmaking, which is, you know, you finish a film and you really feel you've achieved something. But convincing the industry of that, the distributors of that, it can take a long time.

Scott Pelley

It took a year to find someone to distribute Memento. But audiences found amnesia unforgettable. And the so Called Confusing Screenplay was nominated for an Oscar.

Leslie Stahl

Every no that he got just confirmed for him. Even more that he wanted to do this.

Scott Pelley

Emma Thomas met Nolan first day of college. She's produced all of his films and their four children, they'd been married 26 years.

Leslie Stahl

I cannot imagine Chris if he wasn't making films and outside of, you know, family, which is probably the most important thing to him. No, genuinely, the most important thing to him. It's horrifying to think how frustrated he would be if he wasn't able to tell stories via the medium of film.

Scott Pelley

A medium he prefers extra large. He collapsed an actual building in the dark night. Nolan uses computer animation, but not if the authentic is humanly possible. In the film tenet, he bought a 747 and built a hangar to crash it into. In 2024, he blew up the Academy Awards. Oppenheimer won seven Oscars, including Nolan's first for Best Director and Best Picture. Seems to me you make movies the hard way, and the harder the better, as far as you're concerned.

Christopher Nolan

The harder the better, right to the point of the Odyssey. And I think we pushed pretty hard on this one and maybe found some limits.

Anderson Cooper

Let's go.

Scott Pelley

Nolan's Odyssey brought Matt Damon and thousands of cast and crew to Greece, Iceland, Morocco, Italy, and Scotland. He shot 2 million feet of imax film.

John Campotelli

Unbelievable.

Scott Pelley

What do you think when you see that? You've seen it a hundred times.

Christopher Nolan

I've seen it a thousand times. I. I mean, I think that's. It's a lot of work by a lot of people.

Scott Pelley

I have the sense that you don't think of yourself as the most important person person on the set.

Christopher Nolan

I think of myself as the representative of the audience on set. That's my North Star. That's how I have to be looking at the film. So in a sense, I am the most important person on the set because I'm the audience. In taking on the Odyssey, it does become a bat scale. It needed to be the biggest film that we had done. It needed to be challenging to all of us because that's the nature of the story.

Scott Pelley

Looks like you nearly drowned Matt Damon.

Christopher Nolan

We suddenly put him through his paces.

Matt Damon

I mean, it was the hardest movie I've ever done by far. I mean, not even close.

Scott Pelley

This is Damon's third Nolan film after Interstellar and Oppenheimer.

Matt Damon

The first meeting I had with them, the. At the end of the meeting, he said, this. This movie's gonna be hard. I kind of looked at him like I've made. I don't know, 100 movies or whatever. I looked at him like, yeah, I know. And he looked at me and went, no, this movie's gonna be really hard.

Scott Pelley

Nolan often returns to his stars, including Cillian Murphy, in the Batman films, Dunkirk and Oppenheimer.

Matt Damon

He really understands what actors do and what is required of them to do it. He's an actor's director as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, people might not think of him that way because the canvas he paints on is so big. But look at the performances in his

Christopher Nolan

movies, particularly in the case of actors. You're handing them a script and you're saying, okay, you go away and you become an expert on that character's perspective on the story. So then when I'm on set, they're informing me, you know, they're bringing me information about how that character would see things, how that character plays. So in a way, it's the opposite of what people think it is.

Matt Damon

I think what separates him from other directors is the stories he wants to tell are incredibly ambitious and the way he wants to tell them is incredibly ambitious. In this case, he wanted to do it 100% in IMAX, which had never been done.

Scott Pelley

IMAX is Nolan's great ambition.

Christopher Nolan

It's really a wonderful way to retain the original image.

Scott Pelley

The Odyssey is the first feature shot completely on the giant film format. When Nolan was 16, he saw an IMAX documentary at a museum and was spellbound by the five story screen. But IMAX is expensive and cumbersome. Digital photography and editing are faster and cheaper. So almost no one does this anymore. Look at the splicing machine. It looks like it was made in the 1940s.

Christopher Nolan

Probably was.

Scott Pelley

We watch the Odyssey being cut and glued together in the last film lab of its kind in the world. Why keep this ancient art Alive? Well, the 70 millimeter IMAX frame has resolution or image quality up to three times higher than digital art. The hard way.

Christopher Nolan

There it is.

Scott Pelley

Oh, nice. Very clean. Hollywood could say IMAX isn't practical. Screenplays shouldn't challenge the audience and computers are cheaper than a 747. But the people we call artists are inspired by dreams. Like a 7 year old with a Super 8. How would you like Hollywood historians to describe your career?

Christopher Nolan

Long. I'd love to feel that I had added something to the body of work of all the filmmakers I have admired and that great film history that's developing. If I can play some part in moving the language of it forward somehow, that would be. That would be a great thing to be remembered.

Michael Bates

For.

Leslie Stahl

Hey there, it's Jill Schlesinger. I'm launching a new show. It's called Money Moves, and your money is going to move. We're going to help you make better financial decisions. We're going to call out the B.S. you're finding all over social media. We're going to give you actionable guidance to make your financial life clearer, less stressful. We're going to answer your financial questions and take the mystery out of your financial life. Follow and listen to Money Moves with Jill Schlesinger wherever you get your podcasts.